'Working-Class' Majority Needs a Hero

By Michael Zweig, Newsday, 1 September 2000

AL GORE raised a ruckus when he went populist at the Democratic Party
convention in Los
Angeles last month. Ever since, he's been attacking tobacco companies
and oil, insurance
and pharmaceutical giants. Voters seem to like it, giving his
post-convention poll ratings a
boost. News commentators and media pundits have more often expressed
shock bordering
on outraged disbelief that he would resort to "class struggle"
politics, as though the term
alone is enough to discredit the point entirely.

But it's true. There is indeed class warfare in this country. The
problem is, only one class
seems to know it-the class that has been winning for the last three
decades. Between 1972
and 1997, as unions lost power, the real earnings of nonsupervisory
workers (after taking
inflation into account) fell about 20 percent, even though their
productivity continued to rise.
Family income has stayed level only because more family members are
working, and for
longer hours. Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of the new wealth created
in the Reagan
years went to the top 1 percent of households, while the bottom 80
percent ended up worse
off because of a sharp rise in their personal debt.

In the past three years, tight labor markets have finally led to
increases in real income for
workers. But even in the Clinton-Gore boom, worker incomes are rising
more slowly than
worker productivity, so income and wealth continue to grow ever more
unequal. In 1980, a
typical major corporate CEO made 42 times the income of an average
production worker. In
1995, it was 141 times. By 1998, it was 419 times.

This is not simply a case of "the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer." This is a case of
the working class taking it in the neck while the capitalist class goes
to the bank. By
working class, I mean people who have little control over the pace or
content of their work
and who aren't supervising other workers. That's 62 percent of the
labor force.

If we understand class as a question of power rather than income or
lifestyle, we see that
America is not a "middle-class society." With the capitalist class
amounting to just 2
percent of the labor force and a middle class of professionals,
supervisors, managers and
small business owners amounting to 36 percent, this is a society with a
working-class
majority.

Campaign talk about "working families" obscures the existence of
classes in this country
even as it hints at an appeal to working-class people. Al Gore talks a
lot about fighting. But
whom are we supposed to fight? Not just three or four industries that
damage us as
consumers. The problem for working people is again to find ways to
limit the power of the
capitalist class, the class that for 30 years has systematically
damaged them as workers.
That's how we won Social Security, union protection and shared
prosperity in the past.

The middle class has an interest here, too. Small business owners and
professionals
closely connected to the working class, like teachers, nurses and
social workers, have lost
ground along with the workers they serve. Those, many fewer in number,
who serve the
capitalist class, like high-end lawyers and accountants, have
prospered. Most middle-class
people would benefit from a strong working-class political movement.

After decades of media talk about the middle class, and a disappeared
working class, Al
Gore's reference to "working families" comes at a time of renewed
AFL-CIO organizing and
student campaigns against sweatshops. Many people were caught off guard
by Gore's
rhetorical move to the left, away from the now-traditional fight for
the middle, but we should
welcome this as an opening to explore the realities of class life in
America.

Who among the current crop of presidential candidates is best equipped
to lead the country
on behalf of the working class? Is it really Al Gore? Could George W.
Bush possibly make
the case, or whoever emerges from the Reform Party debacle? Is it Ralph
Nader? How can
we start again to create working-class politics? The presidential
campaign traditionally gets
serious after Labor Day. Will a real working-class hero please step
forward?

Michael Zweig teaches economics at the State University of New York at
Stony Brook and
is the author of "The Working Class Majority: America's Best-Kept
Secret.